Hey Team! I just spent the last 10 days flat on my back annihilated by some sort of flu/strep combo. It is no joke people! Jeff has it now too, of course he does, but somehow we spared our children. For them, it’s been like lord of the flies (sans Piggy), no one wears clothes, and there is no such thing as bedtime – cinnamon toast crunch for breakfast lunch and dinner. I’m just proud that they kept themselves alive. They were rewarded by not getting sick and for that we are all truly blessed. Yesterday at lunch, Jeff and I were chatting as we pathetically sipped chicken flavored ramen. We decided that this sickness was like a 100 year flood, but only to your body.

Anyways.

I wanted to get this post done last week, but that wasn’t gonna happen. I’m here to talk about goalzzz babies, and I got a few and I wanted to share them with yas. Right not my goal is to have my face stop leaking before the weekend. But I have lots of other bigger, happier goals too.

For the past few months I’ve felt like I was floundering a bit and I think it was probably because I wasn’t focused. I was doing stuff, but I wasn’t doing it in a way where I could say, “check that one of the list, one less thing I have to worry about” and then pat myself on the back. It sounds cheesy, but I operate a lot better when I can see that I’m actually achieving goals. That being said, here’s my list for this year, it covers everything – house, cabin, garden & blog.

HOME

Upstairs Hallway

Hands down, the ugliest space in our entire house is the upstairs hallway. It’s just so boring, and blah, and narrow, and I’ve never been able to really spend time with or give it any TLC. Part of me kind of just hates it. You’ll hear all about why soon enough. The goal is to make the upstairs hallway a more non-disgusting part of our home.

Staircase

Once I get a handle on the hallway, I’d love continue the momentum and keep it going down our stair well. This space has potential, and I’ve been grappling with it for years. I’ve found if you really try and ignore something you can almost make it disappear (yay)! The big things here are how and when to stop a paint color in a stair well (because all of these spaces connect), how to make a plumbers access panel look like it was meant to be there – or at least kind of recede to the background, and how to make our brass railing really stand out, cuz its brass, and who has a brass railing?, and it should stand out!

Doors Refinished

I miss projects where I am taking care of this 108-y-old-house. That’s part of what I’m supposed to be doing with my time here. I’d like to treat it good and strip the four hallways doors upstairs, sanding them down fixing the woodwork, and repainting. The boys’ room especially needs some TLC and there are layers and layers of paint that need to go. I’m gonna show you guys how I do it too!

Mega Update in the boys room

The boys room needs help, big time. If you couldn’t tell by the name “Boys’ Room”, the boys share a room. The room is a mess even when it’s clean and it needs to be gone through, sorted, reorganized, repainted, and made ready for teens. Finn is going to be 10 this summer and I hear that teens are born earlier and earlier these days. Anyways I’d love to take the time and get them set up in a place where they can continue to grow and be happy.

ORC – Guest Bedroom

Dudes, I’m in. I wanna be a guest contributor/playa/blogger on the One Room Challenge. I just want to see what it’s like to put a space together on a timeline. I haven’t figure out exactly what room to do, it will either be the boys’ room or the guest room but both are in desperate need of a facelift. The guest room has been a hodgepodge of unused furniture and linens for years. We were never sure if the boys would always share a room or if they would one day want their own, but they both seem pretty happy bunking together. With that being said, I think it’s time to commit to a real-deal guest room.

Artwork in the Living & Dining Room

This one is a small fix, but I’d really like to commit to getting some family photos and artwork framed for the walls in the living room and dining room this year.

Side Garden

Not gonna lie. I’m pretty stoked about this idea. Remember on the side of my house where my veggie gardens are. I’m going to abandon them. They just don’t get enough light and now that we have the cabin I can’t give the veg gardens the time they need. Instead, I’m going to turn this space into a wonderful magical perennial side garden and it’s going to be sooooo beautiful. I can’t wait to get started.

CABIN

Records Storage Area

We have this cool little space on top of our staircase at the cabin, it’s like a tiny loft balcony. It’s about 10′ long and 3 1/2 feet wide, and I’ve been racking my brain trying to think what we could do with it. Then it came to us, Jeff and I decided it would be a really cool place for a cabin record collection connected to some sort of wireless speaker. I know, I know. Wireless speakers kind of defeat the purpose of listening to an analog recording, but this wouldn’t be for serious listening. It would be more about the ritual of putting on a record in the morning. Anyways, I’d like to do a built in/Ikea hack in this space and I’d like to share it with ya. Also, we just purchased a real deal piece of artwork from a real deal photographer, Brian Lesteberg and the photography will be hanging on the wall above our future record perch.

Basement Bedroom / Office

Alright, this is kind of a crazy one. Our basement at the cabin is nice because it has high ceilings, it’s clean and dry, and it’s all concrete – it’s just unfinished. The good thing is that it’s basically a clean slate. Our long term goal would be to build out the entire 900sf and make a living room/bathroom/bedroom out of the basement. For the short term though, it would be great to have one extra bedroom to put bodies (not dead ones, that would be gross), and it would be really, really great for Jeff to have an office he can work from while he’s at the cabin – right now we put him in the corner of the guest bedroom with a space heater. What I want to do is just throw up some framing, run some wire for electrical, add drywall and a door, and call it a guest bedroom/office. Is that even possible? I don’t want it to be too precious that we won’t feel bad demo-ing at a later date when we decide to do the entire basement. I feel like I could convince a few dudes to help with this project, and we could have it framed out in a long weekend. Am I dreaming?

Paint Exterior

I’d like to start slapping some paint up on that cabin this summer. We want to go dark too, whether it’s dark green or black I’m not sure, but it will look awesome.

Garden

Cabins need gardens too! I’d like to do a little more research about the the native flora, but I’d like to start a small garden along the house and around the fire pit. The kids and I could collect rocks for borders and fill the beds with Iris, ferns, and hosta.

The Tennis Court

You may have heard us refer to the cabin as ‘The Country Club’ and it’s not just for fun. There is a full sized tennis court in the woods! It’s so crazy, I can’t even describe it. We didn’t even notice it was there the first two time we saw the house. It’s deep in the woods, it’s surrounded by 12′ long poles and chicken wire, and the base of it is covered in moss. It looks and feels insane. It’s also the perfect place for sports or a murder! This fall we cleared the moss off the surface of the court, and with a good power wash this spring I think we can have it up and running. The court is original to the 1968 cabin and all the posts for the net are still there. All wee need is a net. I think it would also be incredibly fun to get a basketball hoop up on that court too.

BLOG

Fill in that content!

It was about a year ago that I started really trying to flush out my content. I had big plans to do these elaborate house tours with links and resources. I didn’t get far, and I’d really like to finish that up sometime this century.

Responsive Menu

Last spring I made the site responsive, which I had really been dreading doing for sometime. I still need to add a hamburger menu so you guys can search and navigate when your on dem screens. I do all the coding myself so doing something as simple as adding a menu is in reality going to take me a lot of time and research. Anyways, gotta get dat done.

I hope the ORC will be fun, I always love watching everyone else. I’m a little nervous that I won’t be as amazing as everyone else because folks have set the bar high. I’m excited for a challenge though, I think I need to push myself a little bit.

I’m with you on needing to see tangible progress. I think I need to sit my ass down and make my own 2018 list. There are so many unfinished projects around here, it’d be nice to just get those wrapped up.

All of your to-do list also sounds like stuff I’d love to read about, too, so I am excited for you.

And that tennis court in the woods is craaaaaaay. I don’t know a single other person with a cabin in WI who has that kind of space. They just have a lot of ugly sheds to store snowmobiles and ATVs!

Yes to the court at the cottage-my kids and their cousins use ours for basketball, road hockey, sad ass games of tennis (which is more like trying to nail the other person with the ball), hopscotch-you name it! People think it is ridiculous but it gets used so much.

Yeah! That’s what I want to hear. I have dreams that we might play tennis in the mornings, but I’m not sure if that’s realistic. I know for sure it would get used for basketball, four square, riding bikes and kickball though!

That flu was the worst! (fellow minneapolis-in here and I think our area got hit hard this witner) I had it about a month ago and it took me weeks to get back to me. I started drinking apple cider vinegar shots (in hot water) every day, kombucha, upping my vitamins and tea and eating boatloads more veggies. Oh and taking epson salt/baking soda baths nightly. I know they all sound kind of hokey whatever but I swear they all helped a $hit ton. Oh! And elderberry syrup. Anyway. Stoked for more content from you. Whatever it is. Still super jealous of your cabin…

That is a big honking list, but having read your blog the last couple years I have no doubt that you will pull it off! Mine is about as long but I think I’ll manage to accomplish about 3% of it. I’m especially intrigued to see what happens with your doors. I’m in the thick of refinishing windows in the enclosed porch of our ‘06 foursquare, so these used to be the exterior windows with the 110 years of paint one might expect. I have tried every non-methylene chloride stripper out there and finally settled on a little routine with Soy Gel, wet scraping & sanding, and a respirator for the lead dust. There is a horrible primer at the bottom layer that is like chipping off limestone, I’m guessing it’s like some ridiculous pure lead asbestos radium concoction they used in the olden days. I opened Pandora’s box and it’s a horrible project, but interior doors sound way more fun and satisfying!

Also, thanks for inspiring a random Chicago lady with your basement. I relied on your posts waaaay too much for guidance on my recent finishing job!

Regarding the responsive menu – there are several WordPress plugins that look super nice that will make your menu responsive with almost no additional effort from you (tell it what menu to use, what CSS selector to hide, pick your colors, make sure the hamburger is where you want it, and done). I use this one pretty regularly, and it’s great! https://wordpress.org/plugins/responsive-menu/